In researching my new book, I have come across the extraordinary animus that the clergy of all denominations bore against dancing, an animus that becomes choreophobia. The Curé of Ars not only tried to stop dancing, he told one penitent that she was forbidden to watch dancing, because she would be “dancing in her heart.”
One suspects a certain control issue to which the clergy are liable. The Spectator (in 1888!) observed that a mayor of a small town planned to give a ball. The local Evangelical rector the Rev. Mr .Price was not amused, in fact, he
is exceedingly indignant and being indignant cries aloud. He tells the Mayor publicly in a letter to a local paper that balls are bad, that they inflame the worst passion of the street, that there is no Scriptural precedent for such an entertainment, that you never heard of Moses or the Prophets or Christ or the Apostles giving a ball, that God and the Bible are against balls, and that in short the Mayor who was recently ill, and might therefore have known better, is a dreadful backslider and deserves and shall receive the prayers of Mr Price and his congregation.
The populace are excited:
the common folk of Lowestoft who find life a little monotonous and thought their Mayor very kind have been so irritated that they got up a demonstration and burned the poor Rector in effigy.
The Spectator suspected that the Evangelical clergy suffered form we call today control issues:
Power is dear to the souls of all men and especially to those who may not make money and are bound by a strict rule of life and as referees upon all social questions the clergy were for a time very powerful It was at one time scarcely possible, in many circles, to read a book without clerical permission first had and obtained, while in one town at least the sorrowing maidens had to surrender their curls or pass under the ban. The motive of that order must have been the love of power, for no possible misdirection of thought can make curls immodest, and the clergy never urge, being themselves all married, that it was the duty of women to make themselves unattractive.
These clergy were strict Sabbatarians:
They insisted on three attendances at church. They prohibited all perusal of secular literature. They pronounced all amusements recreations or gatherings positively immoral, and finally they stopped – we know this will be denied but it is true – all strolling in fields. The result was that the Sunday became a day endless ennui, varied by gossiping indoors; that a dislike of it grew up in the young men; and that of all belong to that generation, the elderly men who were trained by Evangelical clergy have the least liking for attending church.
The Spectator (wrongly) though Papists did not suffer from this attitude. The Evangelical clergy’s
radical mistake – a mistake made by almost all priests except the Roman Catholic, who are kept from it by knowledge acquired in the Confessional – was that they relied on a minute regulation of conduct for the improvement of character.
Protestants, who claimed Gospel freedom, fell into the same trap that Catholics frequently fall into, trying to better men by a minute web of laws and regulations, in an attempt to protect against the slightest temptation, while forgetting that character grows only under testing.
there is no Scriptural precedent for such an entertainment…
Apparently, the good rector never read 2 Samuel 6: 12-15:
Then King David was told, “The Lord has blessed Obed-edom’s household and everything he has because of the Ark of God.” So David went there and brought the Ark of God from the house of Obed-edom to the City of David with a great celebration. After the men who were carrying the Ark of the Lord had gone six steps, David sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. And David danced before the Lord with all his might, wearing a priestly garment. So David and all the people of Israel brought up the Ark of the Lord with shouts of joy and the blowing of rams’ horns.
Leon, there’s something beyond the lust for power going on here. It’s jealousy. “Shepherds” like the good rector in the Spectator article believe that Christianity is a fundamentally joyless exercise. Consequently, anybody who looks like they’re having a good time *has* to be a “sinner.”
Moreover, trying to force the laity to obey minute rules and regulations merely serves to infantilize the “flock” — which, of course, many pastors precisely seek to do. Consequently, the congregants never see themselves as adults.
They also never see themselves as adopted sons and daughters of the living God, Who loves them and is tender beyond their comprehension, but as fear-filled worms who will be destroyed by the slightest disruption — and, again, who need their control-freak pastors.
A chaste demeanor rests in the heart of the individual. Those of us educated before the sixties in Parochial schools were taught with the Baltimore Catechism. One thing that was impressed on our mind was individual responsibility to avoid the “Near occasion of sin”. The Bishops have since given their Impramatur’s to every form of feely good catechesis since.. Today’s Catholic youth, in general, have no concept of what a sin is much less how to avoid it. What passes for night life public dancing today, mimics every sexual act imagineable.Perhaps the Cure of Ars knew of Satan’s plans for the dance and the dancers?
From my conservative Protestant background, I can remember circa 1960 that ministers were expected not to smoke, drink or dance. If the minister was unmarried, everyone was willing to provide him with a meal. My grandmother fed the one who lived on her street, and she was not even a member of his congregation.
In any case, the dances of those days, while being romantic in nature, were not as overtly sexual as today’s dances. Every time I have seen a clergyman dance, people stare at him. So, why would anyone want that much attention unless he had trained with Arthur Murray?
My family research has revealed that I am the 6th great granddaughter of two Anglican priests in Colonial Virginia of 1700. Now I find myself wondering if was socially acceptable for them to dance the Virginia Reel. I will have to search for the answer to that. Does anyone know?